7 reasons why Trump would hate being president

The growing conventional wisdom about Donald Trump and his flailing campaign is that the candidate is sabotaging his own bid for the White House. As outlandish as that may seem on its face, there are reasons that it may very well be true. Should he win, Trump will loathe the next 1,460 days of his life.

As someone who has never worked in Washington, never obtained a security clearance, never received an ethics briefing, and never assembled a team of experienced policy aides, Donald Trump will be in for the shock of his life when he realizes starting January 20, 2017 just how much harder – and different – running a government is from running a private business. The Republican nominee will hate the presidency, so much so that even if he won the White House, he would be sorely tempted to quit before his term even ends.

Here are seven reasons why:

1. You’re (never) fired. Presumably Trump thinks he can run the government like he ran things on “The Apprentice” — telling people that he deems not up to snuff that they’re fired. That may be how his campaign works with its revolving door of staffers and campaign managers. But the federal bureaucracy isn’t the Trump Organization. In order for his agencies to carry out his agenda, he’ll need the help of thousands of civil servants to do the work — people protected by federal employee union rules and regulations that are not accountable to any administration. Presidential historians have written time and again about how unprepared incoming presidents are to manage the bureaucracy, and Trump will be no different — just far more frustrated than most. Trump simply can’t fire any bureaucrat on the spot even if they perform incompetently. There’s a whole process in place that governs the removal of civil service employees, and most linger on long after a complaint has been filed.

Equally difficult will be hiring people. All presidential appointees need to meet federal ethics requirements, FBI background checks, and other security clearance guidelines. That process can take months, even years — which would be infuriating for an impatient manager like Trump. His high-level appointees — such as his secretary of state or treasury — require confirmation from the U.S. Senate, a body which may not be disposed to do President Trump many favors.

2. Congress will drive him insane. On the campaign trail, Trump has made big promises like enacting a sizable tax cut plan, replacing Obamacare, tearing up trade deals — not to mention building a giant wall on another country’s dime. But he has demonstrated little understanding of how much the legislative branch controls a president’s agenda. It is the Congress, not the president, that introduces and passes laws such as Trump’s proposed tax cut.

To date, his overtures to even his fellow Republicans in Congress have been disastrous.

Even the biggest decisions a president faces are subject to the whims of others — especially Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and the judiciary. Take, for example, the 2008 bank bailout, otherwise known as the TARP. I know from my firsthand experience as the program’s chief operating officer that when it was created in October 2008, the bailout was not simply a matter of executive prerogative. The president and his treasury secretary couldn’t just snap their fingers and execute — and in this instance the security of the financial system was hanging in the balance. Once the decision was made to inject capital into the banks, President Bush still had to wait for Congress to pass the authorizing legislation (the House first voted it down before finally passing the bill). And then eight different congressional committees and five different oversight authorities scrutinized every detail of program policy and execution.

Congress moves at its own (slow) pace, and since Trump’s style favors snap judgments and bold declarations, Congress’s methods will cause him more madness. To date, his overtures to even his fellow Republicans in Congress have been disastrous — revealing the cell phone number of the influential and media-friendly Senator Lindsey Graham, attacking the war-hero status of John McCain, who just happens to chair the Senate Armed Services Committee, and flirting with refusing to endorse the sitting Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, for reelection after Ryan took great risks to endorse Trump for the White House. As for the Democrats, the outgoing leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, has already questioned Trump’s mental fitness for the job. Hardly an auspicious beginning.

3. He’ll be investigated to death. As a private businessman, Mr. Trump has avoided detailed scrutiny of his wealth and business entanglements. He had very publicly chafed at audits, which he claims to receive annually, from the IRS. Just wait until he’s president. Mr. Trump can almost certainly expect to be barraged by congressional investigations into his business affairs, relationships with foreign leaders, and anything else Congress decides is in the public interest. The Justice Department may well decide to conduct an investigation of its own, once the first scandal arises. If Trump’s candidacy leads to a Democratic takeover of the House or Senate, look for congressional subpoenas to start making their way to the Oval Office almost immediately.

4. The judges will relentlessly question his executive orders. Frustrated by governmental gridlock or an uncooperative Congress, presidents issue hundreds of executive orders. We can expect that President Trump will do the same. But his stated desire to issue directives without regard for legal strictures (“They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me”) indicates we can also expect him to push the limits of executive authority. This, in turn, is certain to lead to litigation, and ultimately a review by the Supreme Court. This check on Trump’s “my way or the highway” approach is something he’ll despise, and it will continue no matter how many times he demeans the race or ethnicity of a particular judge.

5. The boredom factor. Anyone familiar with the rambling style of his speeches knows that Donald Trump has a short attention span. Unfortunately for him, it is the responsibility of the president to engage in the mundane (ceremonial functions), the arcane (meeting with heads of state of small nations), and the immediate (dropping everything because wildfires are destroying homes in California) every single day as president. There’s no such thing as a selective presidency that only focuses on the fun parts of “making America great again.” Trump would be required to deal with thousands of things that he simply doesn’t care about. He can’t decide to spend two weeks in Scotland at his golf course, without the Secret Service, the media, any foreign and domestic crises large and small, hounding him at practically every tee. His first meeting with officials from the Department of Agriculture to discuss drought conditions in the heartland will have him heading for a permanent vacation to Mar-a-Lago.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses delegates at the end of the last day of the Republican National Convention | Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

6. The unquenchable beast at his door. Trump handles criticism poorly; he’s not proven to be effective in a press conference setting, which is necessary, and he’s far too prone to irresponsible — if not reckless — rhetoric. The media, which Trump unabashedly despises, will be working down the hall in the White House press room and traveling with him everywhere he goes and questioning everything he does. For four straight years and without relief, they will be relentless in their examination. Internal leaks, tell-all books, off the record sourcing, the 24-hour Internet cycle — all of these will poke holes in a Trump administration from the beginning. Trump can’t tweet his way around the myriad things the press will dig into, including his family’s activities, his marriage, and his children’s private lives.

7. The demands of healer-in-chief. The president is called upon during times of great tragedy, domestic and international, to be a humanitarian and an empathizing healer. Think of Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombings, or George W Bush after 9/11, or Barack Obama after Dallas. Trump’s a different kind of person. After the mass shootings in Orlando and Dallas, he was quick to politicize the issue and avoided all but the most token expressions of empathy. As president, he will have to do a more convincing job of acting like he cares. He’s going to be asked to be someone he’s proven incapable of being.

In a sense, it’s easy to pity the Donald Trump of August 2016. The Donald Trump of a few months ago was clearly enjoying riding high on his primary victory. But now, he seems to realize the gravity of the situation. The joke is finally getting old. And his choice is unenviable: If he loses, he becomes, well, a “loser,” something he’s never, ever been (just ask him). But if he wins, he’s stuck actually having to govern, with all the boring, sluggish, complicated grunt work that entails. He’d have actual responsibility, and find himself accountable to a nation of millions. Deep down, he probably knows he doesn’t want that. For the first time in his life, Donald Trump might truly be hoping to lose.

Howard Schweitzer is currently the managing partner of Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies in Washington DC. He served as chief operating officer of the TARP in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations and general counsel of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.